The introduction of data processing equipment into the office and shipping environments has created untold opportunities for improvements in practices and efficiency but has also created not a few new problems. Among these problems is the problem of static discharge. The slightly surprising, slightly annoying, slightly humorus little shocks that people get in dry weather can have very serious affects on electronic data processing equipment. Occasionally static discharge may physically damage equipment but, more frequently, the static discharge will merely disrupt the program sequence of the data processor; causing the system to appear to "go to sleep" (i.e., no longer respond to inputs). Such failures may also be caused by transient "glitches" on the power line supplying the equipment, RF interference or electromagnetic pulses.
Users find failures of this type particularly annoying since they not only cause at least delay and possibly the loss of valuable data but are also largely undiagnosable. Typically, the system will resume normal operation, less perhaps some data, upon being reset; leaving everyone to wonder just what happened. Because such failures are so exasperating to users and so difficult for field service personnel to deal with extensive efforts are made to reduce or eliminate the problem. Components are shielded, power supplies are filtered, anti-static mats are supplied and other steps are taken to reduce the occurence of these failures. But, because of the innumerable ways static or power supply transients may interact with a system it has generally proved impractical to completely eliminate all these various failure mechanisms at an economical cost. Thus, there remains a need for a low cost method for ameliorating the consequences of those failures which do occur.
Thus, it is an object of the subject invention to provide a low cost means for improving the capability to recover from failures such as those caused by static discharge in data processing systems.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such means which is compatible with other techniques used to reduce the rate of occurrence of such failures.
It is also an object of the subject invention to provide such a means which requires minimal modifications to the hardware and software of the data processing system and places a minimal additional computational burden on the system.